ABSTRACT
On 1 October 2000, the Netherlands decriminalised the sex industry by lifting the general ban on brothels in the Criminal Code (CC). At the end of the twentieth century, the Dutch sex industry had developed into an openly manifested and tolerated but still illegal industry. In the 1980s it was the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, specifically the Department of Emancipation Affairs (DCE), rather than the Ministry of Justice, that was charged to study and propose legal changes to guarantee the rights of sex workers, thus understanding sex work as a social and labour issue. The first bill to lift the general ban on brothels was submitted to Parliament in 1987. In the meantime, criticism was growing among sex workers that the new provisions on prostitution and trafficking, including the envisaged licensing system, predominantly served the interest of municipalities in control and public order, rather than the interests of prostitutes, such as privacy protection and access to social security.
